Wednesday, June 18, 2014

10 Myths about the Crisis in Iraq

The ongoing Iraq crisis has upended many assumptions
about Iraq and US policy in the Arab East (al-mashriq)
and Persian Gulf.Unfortunately Western
media reporting is filled with much erroneous information on the crisis.

Sectarian politicians, who seek to manipulate
ethnoconfessional cleavages, contribute to this misinformation because it
benefits their own interests.Most
Western journalists are dependent on these political elites for information.Often unable to speak or read Arabic (or
Kurdish), they cannot communicate with ordinary citizens and grasp the feelings
of “the street.”

To offset what I consider to be the misinformation
on the current crisis in Iraq, I offer 10 myths about the crisis.These myths not only distort the crisis but
have the potential to lead policy-makers, both Iraqi and American, to implement
to counter-productive policy outcomes.

Myth # 1:The
crisis in Iraq is caused by sectarianism

No argument is more flawed than the one that the Iraq
crisis pits Sunnis and Shi’a against each other.Emblematic of this misunderstanding is Wolf
Blitzer’s recent assertion on CNN’s The
Situation Room that, “Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq have hated each other and
been engaged in violent conflict for centuries.”

Iraqi youth protest sectarianism

Rather than based in some visceral hatred between
Sunni and Shi’i Arabs, this crisis is the result of destructive public policy
implemented by Iraq’s sectarian
entrepreneurs (tujjar al-ta’ifiya),
especially Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.In short, Maliki and large sectors of the political elite have used
their power and access to oil wealth to promote a corrupt political system in
which “divide and conquer” strategies are a core component of their political culture
and rule.

The stereotype of purported Sunni-Shi’i hatred is
belied by even a superficial knowledge of modern Iraqi society and history.Sunnis and Shi’is have a high rate of
intermarriage (much higher than Whites and African-Americans, or Christians and
Jews, in the United States) that, prior to the violence that beset Iraq between
2004 until 2008, reached 40% in some Iraqi cities such as Baghdad.

Intermarriage takes place between Arabs and Kurds,
Arabs and Turkmen, and among other ethnic and confessional groups in Iraq as
well.After 2003, intermarriage between
Sunnis and Shi’a has continued, even if some parents discourage it, fearing
that the rise in politically motivated sectarianism will prove dangerous to
their offspring.

In public opinion polls taken after 2003,
sectarianism has hovered around 10% in terms of issues important to Iraqis.In all polls, the two main concerns
consistently have been employment and personal security.To gain a “down to earth” feeling about
sectarianism in Iraq, I highly recommend the film, Baghdad High (http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5e0_1232315843),
that was made by 4 Iraqi youth – Sunni, Shi’i, Kurd and Christian – who are studying
for their comprehensive examinations at the end of high school.This film, completed during the height of
insurgent violence in 2006 and 2007, makes clear that sectarianism is not a
core value of Iraqi society.

If we look back at the Iraqi nationalist movement
that was crushed by the first Ba’thist regime that came to power in February 1963,
we see a long period of cooperation, that began with the June-October 1920
Revolution, that included all Iraq’s ethnoconfessional groups, including Shi’a,
Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmen, Jews, Christians and other groups (for details, see my Memories of State: Politics, History and
Collective Identity in Modern Iraqhttp://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520235465
– English and Arabic editions; and Orit Bashkin’s, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq).

After having suppressed a March 1991
uprising that almost brought down his regime, Saddam spent the rest of the
1990s and early 2000s trying to set Iraq’s different ethnoconfessional groups
against one another in an effort to prop up his rule.

Myth # 2:Nuri al-Maliki can solve the current crisis

Nuri al-Maliki is one of the main causes of the Iraq
crisis, if not the main cause.The two enablers in keeping him in power have
been the US and Iran.Although his State
of Law Coalition did not win the 2010 parliamentary elections - won instead by
the cross-ethnic al-Iraqiya Coalition – the US and Iran colluded with Maliki
allowing him to gain a second term on very dubious constitutional-legal
grounds.

Since gaining a
second term in 2010, Maliki has done everything he could to consolidate his
power.He removed the autonomy of the
Independent High Electoral Commission and the Central Bank and intimidated the
judiciary so they would vote according to wishes.He has appointed commanders who are
incompetent but who were either loyal to him or paid bribes to obtain their
commissions.

Maliki undermined the Anbar Awakening (Sahwat al-‘Iraq) that General David
Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker organized in 2006 and that played a key
role in ridding al-Anbar Province of al-Qa’ida forces between 2006 and
2008.Maliki promised to integrate
80,000 Sahwa members into the armed forces and police but subsequently reneged
on his promise.

Nuri al-Maliki has alienated all elements of the Iraqi
political system to such an extent that his own Islamic Call Party (Hizb al-Da’wa al-Islamiya) asked him not
to run for a third term last summer.

Some of the most hostile criticism of Maliki has come
from Iraq’s Shi’a, again belying the notion that the crisis is sectarian pitting
Sunnis vs. Shi’a.For example, Basra
Province said it would not support Maliki unless he gave the province control
of local oil production because he has not consulted, as required by the
constitution, the Basra Provincial Council about oil concessions to foreign
corporations.

Child solider - ISIS

The southern provinces – all predominantly Shi’a - have bitterly
criticized him for not dispersing needed revenues to the province for
infrastructural needs such as improving the electric grid that is needed to
provide more electricity.This criticism
has led surrounding provinces such as Misan and Dhi Qar to seek to form a
semi-autonomous region with Basra that would give Maliki less control over the
far south of Iraq.The Shi’a here see
Maliki and his allies in the shrine cities of al-Najaf and Karbala’ as trying
to control the south’s oil wealth.

Myth #
3:There is no alternative to Nuri
al-Maliki as Iraqi prime minister

There is another false assumption.Dr. Adel Abdel Mahdi, an economist who was
president of Iraq from 2005 until 2011, and who previously served as finance
minister, would be an excellent prime minister.Trained in France, he is the son of a respected Shi’i cleric and a
member of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) headed by Ammar al-Hakim, he
has strong leadership credentials.

To counter the argument that he is not a member of
Maliki’s Islamic Call Party or his State of Law Coalition, a number of vice-prime
ministers could be appointed to meet the concerns of other parties, including
someone from the State of Law Coalition.For example, Ayad Allawi, whose al-Iraqiya Coalition won 91 seats in the
2010 elections, could serve as a Vice-Prime Minister, as could Barham Salih who
has served as Iraq’s vice-prime minster and Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) prime minister.

Adel Abdel Mahdi

Husayn al-Sharastani, who has served as Maliki’s Minister
of Oil, could represent the State of Law Coalition, also as a Vice-Prime
Minister.Finally, Masoud Barzani,
currently the president of the KRG, could serve as president of Iraq, a position
in which he has expressed interest.Thus
Barham Salih would represent one of the two main Kurdish parties, the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan, and Barzani, the other main party, the Kurdish Democratic
Party.

Myth # 4:Maliki should remain as prime minister because he won the 2014 elections

Although the State of Law Coalition did win the
largest number of votes in the April 2014 parliamentary elections, the results
of the elections still have not been certified.In any event, Maliki’s coalition did not win anything close to the
number of seats needed to form a government.Few parties want to give him their support in light of his highly divisive
and authoritarian style of rule.

The Arab and Iraqi press reported a number of irregularities
in the elections.First, many of the
vote counters have close ties to the State of Law and the large parties.Second, poll officials report the delivery of
incorrect ballots to polling places that were meant for other areas of the
country.Finally, the fighting in Anbar
meant that many Sunni Arabs were unable to vote.There were reports that ballots meant to be
used by refugees may have been used by other voters instead.In short, Maliki’s State of Law did not win
the elections in any decisive manner.

Myth # 5:US
airstrikes represents a quick fix to the Iraq crisis

Most military analysts argue that airstrikes are
only as good as the intelligence on which they are based.US airstrikes without the proper intelligence
on the ground could actually work against Iraq and the US by creating
significant collateral damage in civilian casualties and destruction of local
infrastructure.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Because ISIS fighters are skilled at urban warfare,
and do not leave themselves open in mass formations or large daytime convoys,
airstrikes could be useful at the margins but cannot substitute for “boots on
the ground.”

Myth # 6:If
the Iraqi army is ineffective, there is no alternative but to introduce US
forces

ISIS preparing to execute Iraqi Army soldiers

It is quite remarkable that, to date, little or
nothing has been said about the 350,000 Peshmerga troops that guard
the KRG.The Peshmerga are hardened fighters
and have special units trained specially for urban warfare.Peshmerga forces could be very effective attacking
ISIS in Mosul which is near the KRG border, just south of Dohuk.

ISIS destroying church in Mosul

Turkish troops could also enter the battle in Syria
behind ISIS lines.Indeed, ISIS
kidnapping of Turkish diplomats and truckers could be used to convene NATO and
have the alliance convene a force to support Turkish troops.Jordan possesses a small but well trained
army that could contribute forces as well.An international force would have much more legitimacy than US forces
fighting alone, especially when US public opinion opposes American
troops in Iraq by 2 to 1.

Myth # 7:Shi’i
militias can provide a substitute for Iraq Army units that deserted in Mosul

Apart from a few trained militias with combat
experience, such as the League of the Righteous People (Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq), the Shi’i militias that are proceeding to the
Samarra/Diyala front are ill-trained.Some fighters were already been killed in an ISIS ambush near
Samarra.Not only will these units
provide little added value militarily, but they can interfere with the
logistics of the Iraqi Army, thus creating more problems than they solve.

Child soldier Shi'i militia

What mobilizing these militias does do is provide Nuri al-Maliki with a national
forum to prop up his support and popularity among Iraq’s Shi’a population.Maliki has appeared on a number of occasions
thus far in front of militia members exhorting them to do their national duty.The policy of organizing Shi’i militias seems
as much as political as military.It
also does not require Maliki to make the more politically undesirable decision to call upon help from other armed forces, such as the Peshmerga or the Turks,
with whom he has had bad relations.

Myth # 8:Iran strongly supports Maliki and therefore will not allow him to leave
office

All indications are that Iran is hedging its bets in
terms who it supports for Iraq's prime minister and had been doing so before the
current crisis developed.Recent Iranian calls for
Maliki to develop a more inclusive government representing all ethnoconfessional
groups points to the fact that Iran is as worried as many Iraqis and foreign
observers that Maliki’s sectarian policies preclude him from being an effective
national leader in the future.

Myth # 9: If US
troops had remained in Iraq after 2011, the crisis would not have developed

One of the refrains of neo-conservative thinkers such
as William Kristol, Robert Kagan and others, and US senators such as John McCain
and Lindsay Graham, is that the crisis was caused by the Obama administration.Because the Obama administration refused to
leave US troops in Iraq 2011, there was no impediment to ISIS forces successfully
attacking the country .

The first point to note ois the Bush adminstration conclude a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that called for full withdrawal of US troops by the end of 2011. Even if, as John McCain claims, Nuri al-Maliki
indicated in a private meeting with him that he supported a residual force remaining
in Iraq, McCain does not understand the power of nationalist pressures for US forces to leave Iraq in 2011. Maliki’s main nemesis at the time, the Sadrist Movement, that had a strong presence
in parliament, would have used any remaining US troops as a rallying point to
attack Maliki for being an “American puppet.”

Further, allowing US troops to remain in Iraq beyond the date
for their departure as specified by the SOFA would have undermined Maliki’s strongman
image.Maliki feared that it would have
also given the Obama administration greater influence in Iraq to try and offset
Maliki’s sectarian policies (although the Obama administration has never
exerted the type of pressure on Maliki that it could have done given the
amount of weapons and military training that it has provided to Iraq).

Myth # 10:The US has no right to exert influence on Iraqi politics

The US does not have the right to tell Iraq who
should be its rulers.However, there is
no reason that prevents the Obama administration from indicating to Iraq’s political
class that it no longer supports Nuri al-Maliki in light of the sectarian and
destructive policies he has pursued to date.

Such a policy is not the same as telling the Iraqis
who they should choose as prime minister.It does let Maliki and his allies know that, given the military aid,
military training, and support for Iraq’s remaining debt burden to Kuwait stemming from
the 1991 Gulf War, the US is no longer going to prop up a regime that pursues policies
that run counter to the Iraqi, regional and American interests in the Middle
East.

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About Me

Eric Davis is Executive Director, MA Program in Political Science - Concentration in United Nations and Global Policy Studies, Professor of Political Science and the former director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA. He is author of CHALLENGING COLONIALISM: BANK MISR AND EGYPTIAN INDUSTRIALIZATION, 1920-1941 (Princeton University Press, 1983; Institute for Arab Development, Beirut, 1986, and Dar al-Sharook, Cairo, 2009); STATECRAFT IN THE MIDDLE EAST: OIL, HISTORICAL MEMORY AND POPULAR CULTURE (University Presses of Florida, 1993); MEMORIES OF STATE: POLITICS, HISTORY AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN MODERN IRAQ (University of California Press, 2005; Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2008; and the forthcoming, TAKING DEMOCRACY SERIOUSLY IN IRAQ (Cambridge University Press). Currently, he is writing a book on the Islamic State and the changing modalities of terrorism in the Middle East. He can be contacted at davis@polisci.rutgers.edu and @NewMidEast